The Gaze of Mercy

The Gaze of Mercy

A Commentary on

Divine and Human Mercy

Raniero Cantalamessa

Translated by Marsha Daigle-Williamson, PhD

To His Holiness Pope Francis,

who has placed mercy at the center

of the life and reflection of the Church.

English language edition © 2015 by Raniero CantalamessaFirst published in Italian by Edizioni San Paolo s.r.l.

Piazza Soncino 5 – 20092 Cinisello BalsamoMilan, Italy, © 2015 by Edizioni San Paolo, s.rl.

All rights reserved.

Published by The Word Among Us Press7115 Guilford Drive

Frederick, Maryland 21704www.wau.org

19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5ISBN: 978-1-59325-285-4eISBN: 978-1-59325-477-3

Scripture texts used in this work are taken from The Catholic Edition of Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used with

permission. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Faceout StudiosCover image: Georges Rouault(1871–1958), The Head of Christ@ 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Photo image @ The Cleveland Museum of Art

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the

author and publisher. Made and printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015953884

Table of ConTenTs

Introduction 7

1. In the Beginning Was Love (Not Mercy!) 10

2. “In remembrance of his mercy” The Mercy of God Becomes Flesh 23

3. “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner” Jesus and Zacchaeus 32

4. “Neither do I condemn you” Jesus and the Woman Caught in Adultery 41

5. “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” The Conversion of Matthew 51

6. A Woman with a Flask of Ointment Jesus and the Sinful Woman 58

7. Mercy for People in “Irregular” Situations Jesus and the Samaritan Woman 66

8. Believing in the Mercy of God Peter and Judas, Two Almost Parallel Stories 75

9. There Will Be Joy in Heaven over One Sinner Who Repents The Parables of Mercy 83

The Gaze of Mercy

10. “For our sake he made him to be sin” The Passion of Christ, the Height of God’s Mercy 96

11. “He was raised for our justification” The Resurrection of Christ, the Victory of God’s Mercy 104

12. “The righteousness of God has been manifested!” God’s Justice and Mercy 110

13. “Your sins are forgiven” The Sacrament of Mercy 117

14. “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” The Mercy of God in the Liturgy 128

15. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” From Gift to Duty 138

16. Put On Visceral Mercy Benevolence before Beneficence 148

17. The Mercy of Outsiders The Parable of the Good Samaritan 158

18. “The Father will give you another counselor” The Holy Spirit and Divine Mercy 165

Conclusion The World Will Be Saved by Mercy 176

7

InTroduCTIon

I read the statement somewhere (I can’t remember where) that

“Too many discussions about love circle around its mystery rather

than entering into it.” I believe the same must be said about mercy,

which is a particular aspect of love. The discussion that I am about

to present belongs to the first category and circles around the mys-

tery of mercy. To enter into the mystery, we need to be attracted

to it. One can knock at the door, but the door can only be opened

from the inside. The mystery of mercy is in fact identified in the

Bible with the pure and simple mystery of God. It is the burn-

ing bush that one cannot approach without our sandals being

removed, that is, without having abandoned the pretense of mov-

ing ahead on our own with our own arguments.

So why, then, write about mercy? The question is a real one.

What helped me to get beyond it is the memory of a Gospel epi-

sode, the episode of the paralytic narrated by the Gospel writer

John, who was at the pool of Bethsaida for thirty-eight years (see

John 5:1ff). People believed that the water in the pool had the

power to heal the first person who plunged into it when an angel

stirred the water. The unfortunate man complained to Jesus that

he had no one to lower him into the water at just the right time.

The pool worked the miracle, but it was necessary for someone

to help the paralytic get in it, to plunge him into it. This is the goal

and the hope that make me venture to write these pages: to encour-

age and “push” myself as I write to leap into the great healing

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The Gaze of Mercy

pool of God’s mercy—and, if possible, those who would read this

book. Its waters are once again being “stirred” for a whole year,

thanks to the Jubilee Year of Mercy called by Pope Francis on the

occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council.

The link between the theme of mercy and the Second Vatican

Council is anything but arbitrary or minor. St. John XXIII, in his

opening address for the council on October 11, 1962, pointed to

mercy as the new approach in the council’s style: “The Church

has always opposed . . . errors [throughout the ages]. Frequently

she has condemned them with the greatest severity. Nowadays,

however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine

of mercy rather than that of severity.”1 In a certain sense, half a

century later the Year of Mercy celebrates the faithfulness of the

Church to this promise.

A comment on this book’s contents. The word “mercy” (hesed

in Hebrew, eleos in Greek) recurs in the Old Testament and the

New Testament in two contexts and with two different meanings,

even though they are interdependent. Its first and original meaning

indicates the sentiment that God fosters toward human beings. Its

second meaning indicates the sentiment that human beings should

1 www.vatican2voice.org/91docs/opening_speech.htm. All quotes from papal and council documents in this book are from the Vatican website.

9

Introduction

foster toward one another: mercy as a gift and mercy as a duty, or

rather, as we will see, as a debt.

Consequently, in the first part of the book, we will reflect on

God’s mercy, on its manifestations in the history of salvation and

in Christ and on the means of grace in the Church’s sacraments

through which mercy reaches us. In the second part, we will reflect

on our duty to be merciful and on the “works” of mercy, in par-

ticular on the duty of the Church and its ministers to be merciful

to sinners, just as Jesus was.

It has been rightly said about Orthodox icons that the body is

included for the sake of the face, and the face is included as a frame

for the gaze. That is the reason for the choice of the book’s title

and for the cover image. It is rare to find an image that speaks to

us of the merciful gaze of Christ with more power than this face

of Christ by Georges Rouault.

10

Chapter 1

In the Beginning Was Love (Not Mercy!)

1. God Is Love

John begins his Gospel by saying, “In the beginning was the Word”

(John 1:1). He does not say “the beginning was the Word,” but

in the beginning was the Word. The Word “was in the beginning

with God” (1:2) but was not itself “the beginning.” The begin-

ning of everything is not the Word or an abstract divine essence

or a Supreme Being but the Person of the Father.

According to the traditional view of the Greek Fathers, which

is increasingly more widely shared by Latin theology today, the

concept of unity in God is not separable from the concept of the

Trinity but forms a unique mystery and flows from a unique act.

With our limited human vocabulary, we can say that the Father

is the fountain, the absolute origin, of the movement of love. The

Son cannot exist as the Son unless he receives from the Father all

that he is. The Father is the only one, even within the Trinity, who

does not need to be loved in order to love.

The unique God of the Christians is thus the Father—not, how-

ever, conceived of on his own (how can he be called “father” unless

he has a son?), but as the Father always begetting the Son and

11


giving himself to him with an infinite love that unites them both,

which is the Holy Spirit.

This love in the Trinity, which constitutes the Trinity, is their

very nature, to use a word accessible to us even if it is inadequate;

it is not grace. It is love, not mercy. The Father loving the Son is

not a grace or a concession; it is in a certain sense a necessity. The

Father needs to love in order to exist as Father. The Son loving

the Father is not a concession or a grace; it is an intrinsic neces-

sity even if it occurs with the utmost freedom; the Son needs to be

loved and to love in order to be the Son. The Father begets the Son

in the Holy Spirit by loving him; the Father and the Son breathe

forth the Holy Spirit in loving each other.

What St. Bernard says about love is fully and absolutely realized

only in God; it has no other “why” outside itself: “Love suffices

in itself; it pleases in itself and for its own sake. It is its own merit

and reward. Love does not need any cause beyond itself, nor any

fruit—its fruit is its use. I love because I love; I love so that I may

love.”2 Love is enough unto itself, but nothing is enough for love!

The action of God toward human beings is proof of that!

2 St. Bernard, On the Song of Songs, “Sermon 83,” 4, quoted in Bernard McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (New York: Modern Library, 2006), p. 259; see Opera omnia, ed. Cisterc. 2, 1958, pp. 300–301.

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The Gaze of Mercy

2. Love Makes a Gift of Itself

What happens when God created the world and human beings in

it who are made in his image and likeness? Love makes a gift of

itself. Love, like the good, by its nature “tends to pour itself out”;

it is “diffusivum sui.”3 In the fourth Eucharistic prayer in use

after the Second Vatican Council, the Church prays, “[You] have

made all that is, so that you might fill your creatures with bless-

ings and bring joy to many of them by the glory of your light.”

St. Catherine of Siena, in one of her prayers, expressed this same

truth with impassioned words:

Why then, Eternal Father, did you create this creature of yours?

I am truly amazed at this, and indeed I see, as you show me, that

you made us for one reason only: in your light you saw yourself

compelled by the fire of your charity to give us being, in spite of

the evil we would commit against you, eternal Father. It was fire,

then, that compelled you. O unutterable love, even though you

saw all the evils that all your creatures would commit against your

infinite goodness, you acted as if you did not see and set your eye

only on the beauty of your creature, with whom you had fallen in

love like one drunk and crazy with love. And in love you drew us

out of yourself, giving us being in your own image and likeness.

3 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 2.

13


You, eternal Truth, have told me the truth: that love compelled

you to create us.4

This love poured out is grace and no longer “love as God’s

nature”; it is gratuitous. It could not be otherwise and is thus a

gift, a condescension. It is hesed, mercy. St. Irenaeus has a won-

derful passage on this point:

God did not accept . . . the friendship of Abraham, as though He

stood in need of it, for He was perfect from the beginning . . . , but

that He in His goodness might bestow eternal life upon Abraham

himself, inasmuch as the friendship of God imparts immortality to

those who embrace it. In the beginning did God form Adam, not

as if He stood in need of men, but that he might have . . . [some-

one] upon whom to confer His benefits. . . . [Service] to God does

indeed profit God nothing but He grants . . . benefits upon those

who serve [Him] because they do serve Him, and on His followers

because they do follow Him; but He does not receive any benefit

from them: for He is rich, perfect, and in need of nothing.5

St. Catherine says that God was “compelled” by his love to

create us, but St. Irenaeus seems to be saying the opposite. Both

assertions express a truth about the mystery: God’s creation of us 4 Catherine of Siena, The Prayers of Catherine of Siena, ed. Suzanne Noffke (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), pp. 112–113. 5 St. Irenaeus, Irenaeus of Lyons: Against Heresies, IV, 13, 4–4, 14, 1 (N. p.: Ex Fontibus, 2015), p. 415.

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The Gaze of Mercy

is a necessity, but it is also freely undertaken on his part; he is com-

pelled by his love, yet his actions remain completely free.

The mercy of God thus predates humanity’s sin; it is not just a

response to sin because it exists prior to sin. It is through mercy

(eleos), writes St. Athanasius, that God creates human beings “in

his image” and endows them with reason (so they can recognize

him) and with language (so they can praise him).6 It is by grace

and mercy that we are chosen in Christ “before the foundation

of the world, . . . destined . . . to be his sons” (Ephesians 1:4-5).

3. The Gift Becomes Forgiveness

What does the fact of sin introduce into this picture that is new? In

brief, mercy as a gift becomes mercy as forgiveness. The distinction

that Nicholas Cabasilas, a Byzantine theologian in the thirteenth

century, makes between love as a gift and love that suffers helps

us understand this point:

Two things reveal him who loves . . . one, that he in every possible

way does good to the object of his love; the other, that he is will-

ing, if need be, to endure terrible things for him and suffer pain. Of

the two the latter would seem to be a far greater proof of friend-

ship than the former. Yet it was not possible for God since He is

6 See St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 3, 11, trans. and intro. John Behr (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 2011), pp. 52, 60–61; see PG 25, 101, 116.

15


incapable of suffering harm. . . . So he devised this self-emptying

and carried it out, and made the instrument [i.e., Christ’s human

nature] by which He might be able to endure terrible things and

to suffer pain. When He had thus proved by the things which He

endured that He indeed loves exceedingly, He turned man, who

had fled from the Good One because he had believed himself to be

the object of hate, towards Himself.7

People’s sin and rebellion produce a wound in God: the love

that was gift becomes a love that suffers. Cabasilas, as we see,

delays the suffering love of God until the time of the Incarnation

and passion of Christ. However, in the third century Origen had

already expressed a different idea that is being rediscovered and

welcomed today by theology and even by the magisterium of the

Church. Origen writes,

[The Savior] came down to earth out of compassion for the human

race. . . . [He] experienced our sufferings even before he suffered

on the cross, before he condescended to assume our flesh: For if

he had not suffered, he would not have come down to live on the

level of human life. . . . What is this suffering that he suffered for

us? It is the suffering of love. The Father, too, himself, the God of

the universe, “patient and abounding in mercy” [Psalm 103:8] and

7 Nicholas Cabasilas, Life in Christ, VI, 2, trans. Carmino J. deCatanzaro (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1974), p. 163; see PG 150, 645.

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The Gaze of Mercy

compassionate, does he not in some way suffer? Or do you not

know that when he directs human affairs he suffers human suffer-

ing? . . . [He] suffers . . . [because] of love.8

Origen’s insight had to wait for the great catastrophes of the

last century to resurface to the consciousness of the Church. In the

second half of the last century, some of the most noted theologians

have spoken about the suffering of God, and the International

Theological Commission has offered a substantially positive

judgment on their readings.9 This perspective, with the necessary

qualifications and cautions, was accepted by John Paul II who

wrote this in his encyclical on the Holy Spirit:

The concept of God as the necessarily most perfect being certainly

excludes from God any pain deriving from deficiencies or wounds;

but in the “depths of God” there is a Father’s love that, faced with

man’s sin, in the language of the Bible reacts so deeply as to say:

“I am sorry that I have made him” [cf. Genesis 6:7]. . . . But more

often the Sacred Book speaks to us of a Father who feels compas-

sion for man, as though sharing his pain. In a word, this inscrutable

and indescribable fatherly “pain” will bring about above all the

wonderful economy of redemptive love in Jesus Christ, so that 8 Origen, “Homily 6,” 6, in Origen: Homilies 1–14 on Ezekiel, trans. and intro. Thomas P. Scheck (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2010), pp. 92–93; see GCS 1925, p. 384; see also Origen’s Commentary on Matthew 10, 23, GCS 1935, p. 33.9 See “Teologia, cristologia, antropologia,” in Civiltà Cattolica, 1983, pp. 50–65.

17


through the mysterium pietatis love can reveal itself in the history

of man as stronger than sin. . . . Jesus [is] the Redeemer, in whose

humanity the “suffering” of God is concretized.10

There is no new idea here but rather the recovery of the true face

of God in the Bible that was obscured for centuries by the idea of

“the God of the philosophers,” an unmovable mover who moves

everything without himself moving—much less being moved by

anything. A Jewish rabbi came to the same conclusion as Christian

theologians just by studying and commenting on the Bible. Even

before today’s theologians mentioned above, he wrote, “Does God

suffer? This is a terrible question. . . . It seems to me that God is

wounded; God suffers in His justice or in His mercy [that is, when

he punishes sin or when he overlooks sin]. He suffers because of

the man who sins, He suffers with the man who sins.”11

When we speak of the suffering of God, we should not focus

unilaterally on the Father’s suffering but on the suffering of all

three divine Persons. The suffering of God is trinitarian! The Holy

Spirit himself, being the love of God in person, is also consequently

“God’s pain in person.”12

10 Dominum et vivificantem [On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World], n. 39. 11 Eugenio Zolli, Before the Dawn: Autobiographical Reflections (1954; repr. ed., San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), pp. 31–32.12 See Heribert Mühlen, “Das Herz Gottes: Neue Aspekte der Trinitätslehre, ” in “Theologie und Glaube, 78 (1988): 141–159.

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The Gaze of Mercy

What reconciles the discussion of God’s suffering with our

unshakable faith in his perfection and power is that love will tri-

umph in the end over every kind of pain. Then “he will wipe away

every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall

there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more” (Revelation

21:4)—either for us or for God. Love will triumph, but in its own

way: not by destroying evil and turning it back beyond our bor-

ders (that cannot be done without destroying human freedom) but

by converting evil into good, hate into love.

4. The “Visceral” Love of God

To understand something about God’s suffering, we need to take

into account the distinction between nature and person in the

Trinity. In terms of his nature, God is omnipotent and absolutely

perfect; there cannot be any pain in him deriving from a loss of

vitality because he is the Living One who gives life to everything

and never undergoes any loss of life. Thus, when we say that there

cannot be any pain in God, we are speaking of his nature. The

Father is a person who possesses a divine nature and, as such,

concretely expresses his personality in a series of interpersonal

relationships with the Son and the Spirit but also with human

beings and the angels he created. In the first category of relation-

ships intrinsic to his intimate life with the Son and the Spirit, any

kind of pain is absent. Their perfect unity of love and life excludes

every form of pain.

19


However, the Father is not only the Father of the Son and the

fountainhead of the Spirit but also the creator of the world and

the human beings he placed in charge of it. He freely entered into

a relationship of love and communion with human beings in the

image of the relationship he has with the Son. He enters into this

relationship with all his glory and all his love. The bond the Father

has with the world, then, involves the inner depths of his whole

personality. This is the relationship in which pain occurs for him.

The Father’s plan for creation cannot actually come to pass

without the collaboration and free adherence of human beings.

In saying no to God, human beings strike at the very heart of the

three divine Persons and their desire for a communion of love with

human beings. This is the source of their pain, the refusal of human

beings to be involved in their love and their holiness. Pain, as we

see, is not a lessening or loss of life in God but is only a modality

through which he expresses his fullness of life and love in the face

of the rejection by human beings.

What happens in God is comparable to what takes place in a

woman who has an intense desire for motherhood but who, for

physical reasons or her husband’s refusal, cannot become a mother.

The frustration of her vivid desire for maternity causes her inner

agony! In the same way, the refusal of obedience and of love on

the part of human beings blocks God’s very intense desire to make

human beings partners in his glory.

The previous comparison helps us understand some of the most

beautiful and powerful texts from the Old Testament on God’s

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The Gaze of Mercy

mercy. The reaction of God to the unfaithfulness of his people is

compared in those texts to the visceral sentiment of love-pain that a

woman experiences with the rebellion or disgrace of her offspring:

“Is Ephraim my dear son? / Is he my darling child? / For as often

as I speak against him, / I do remember him still. / Therefore my

heart yearns for him; / I will surely have mercy on him, says the

Lord” (Jeremiah 31:20).

The word that is translated as “heart,” “innermost being,” or

“viscera” is rahamim in Hebrew. It comes from rehem, which

means a mother’s womb. This is a painful love, like the one that

Jeremiah himself experiences during the imminent misfortune that

is about to fall upon his people:

My anguish, my anguish [also translated as “heart” or “bowels”]!

I writhe in pain!

Oh, the walls of my heart!

My heart is beating wildly;

I cannot keep silent;

for I hear the sound of the trumpet,

the alarm of war. (Jeremiah 4:19)

It is as though God accepts taking upon himself the suffering

due to the consequences of his people’s sin, announcing beforehand

what will in fact take place on the cross. We read in Hosea that

the people are hard to convert: the more God draws the people to

21


himself, the more they do not understand and turn to idols. What

should God do in this situation? Abandon them? Destroy them?

Through the prophet, God is sharing his own inner drama that

demonstrates a kind of “weakness” and impotence due to his pas-

sionate love for human beings. God experiences his “heart skip a

beat” at the thought that his people could be destroyed:

My heart recoils [is turned from anger to pity] within me,

my compassion grows warm and tender.

I will not execute my fierce anger . . .

for I am God and not man. (Hosea 11:8-9)

A human being in similar circumstances could give vent to the

heat of his anger and normally does so, but God, because he is

“holy,” is different. Even if we are unfaithful, he remains faithful

because he cannot deny himself (see 2 Timothy 2:13). God finds

himself without any coercive or defensive ability before human

beings. If human beings choose to block his creative act of love

within them, he does not intervene to impose his authority on

them. He can only infinitely respect the free choice of human

beings. They can reject him and eliminate him from their lives,

and he will let them do that and not defend himself. Or better, his

way of defending himself and defending human beings against their

own destruction will be to continue to love, and to do so eternally.

22

The Gaze of Mercy

This is “the pool,” or better, the depths of the mystery that is

open before us. All we need to do is immerse ourselves into it with

amazement and gratitude.

Documents

The Gaze of Mercy